“We want him, Will! Bastard’s rich!” Tom Scarlet shouted and he slammed the poleax into the rich man again, and the lord, Scarlet was sure he opposed a nobleman, struck with his lance and this time Scarlet seized the lance one-handed and tugged hard. The man stumbled forward, tripping, and Scarlet gripped the bottom rim of the man’s helmet and dragged him out of the killing line. Will Sclate was hammering down more men, helped by a dozen of Sir John’s archers, as Scarlet turned his prisoner over. He crouched and grinned into the man’s face. “Rich, are you?”

The man stared back with hatred, so Scarlet drew his knife. He held the point just over the man’s left eyeball. “If you’re rich,” he said, “you live, and if you’re poor, you die.”

“Je suis le comte de Pavilly,” the man said, “je me rends! Je me rends!”

“Does that mean you’re rich?” Scarlet asked.

“Behind you, Tom!” Hook’s voice bellowed, and Tom Scarlet turned to see Frenchmen coming toward him, and at that moment the Count of Pavilly drove his own knife up into Tom Scarlet’s groin. Scarlet screeched, the count heaved up from the mud, and stabbed again, this time into Tom Scarlet’s belly, ripping and cutting, and then Will Sclate’s poleax swung in a hay-cutting slash and the ax blade tore into the Count of Pavilly’s face, breaking his remaining teeth and driving their fragments to the back of his skull. His blood mingled with Tom Scarlet’s. The two bodies, rich man and poor man, were lying together as Sclate ripped his blade from the snagging tangle of steel and bone before being driven back by the sudden rush of Frenchmen.

And Hook was also being driven back.

A wedge of Frenchmen was crashing into the archers. So far the archers had been winning because they attacked and because they were more mobile than their enemy, but at last the French had found a way to carry the fight back to the bowmen. They came shoulder to shoulder and they let the archers waste their blows by parrying instead of cutting back, and if an archer slipped, or swung too hard and was slow to recover his balance, a blade would flicker and an Englishman would sink into the mud to be hammered with a mace. “Just kill them!” the Sire de Lanferelle shouted as he led the wedge. “One at a time! God will give us time to kill them all! Saint Denis! Montjoie!” He sensed victory now. Up to this moment the French had panicked and had allowed themselves to be driven like cattle to the winter slaughter, but Lanferelle was calm, he was deadly and he was confident, and more and more Frenchmen came to follow him, sensing at last that someone had taken command of their destiny.

Hook saw the falcon in its sunlit splendor.

“Behind you, Tom!” he had shouted at Scarlet, and then he had seen the Frenchman in the red and white jupon suddenly heave up, but he had no time to see more because Lanferelle was ahead of him, and Hook was forced to step back as Lanferelle’s poleax stabbed at him. It was not meant as a killing thrust, but rather to unbalance Hook who had to step back a second time to avoid the spike and he might have tripped in the furrows except the small of his back struck one of the slanting stakes that held him upright. He swept his own poleax at Lanferelle’s weapon, but the Frenchman somehow flicked Hook’s cut aside and lunged again, and Hook had to twist around the stake, but the sharpened point caught in his haubergeon and he could not move. Panic blinded him. “Get close,” Saint Crispin said, and Hook rammed his poleax hard forward, struggling in the mud to find good footing, and Lanferelle was so surprised at the sudden counterattack that he checked his next thrust. Hook’s blade glanced off Lanferelle’s armor, but the thrust had released the haubergeon and Hook could step back just before a blow from one of Lanferelle’s men would have crushed his hand where it held the pole.

“I hoped we would meet,” Lanferelle said.

“You wanted to die?” Hook snarled. The panic still rippled in his body, but there was also a relief that he had survived, then he had to parry desperately as two blades darted toward his unarmored legs. Tom Evelgold came to his help, as did Will of the Dale.

“Tom’s dead,” Will said, then swept his big ax around to knock a lance aside.

“How’s Melisande?” Lanferelle asked.

“So far as I know,” Hook said, “she lives.” He thrust again and had the ax knocked aside again, but he had not put all his strength into the blow and recovered fast to sweep the lead-weighted head back to hit Lanferelle’s arm, but still without sufficient force and the Frenchman scarce seemed to notice.

Lanferelle smiled. “She lives,” he said, “and you die.” He began stabbing his weapon in short, very controlled strokes that came fast, sometimes low, sometimes high, and Hook, unable to parry and without time to counter-strike, could only retreat. Lanferelle had crusted blood beside one eye, but his face was strangely calm, and that calmness scared Hook. The Frenchman watched Hook’s eyes all the time, and Hook knew he would die unless he could somehow get past that flickering blade. Tom Evelgold had the same idea and he managed to shove a lance to one side and push past the blade so that he was on Lanferelle’s right, and the centenar, holding his poleax two-handed like a leveled lance, screamed a curse as he rammed the blade forward with its spike aimed at the Frenchman’s faulds. The spike would go through the plates, through the mail, through the leather to rip open Lanferelle’s lower belly, except at the last moment Lanferelle raised the butt end of his pole to deflect the lunge and so take its huge force on his breastplate. The Milanese steel withstood the blow and threw it off, then Lanferelle jerked his head forward, smashing his raised visor hard into Tom Evelgold’s face as another Frenchman skewered a sword into the Englishman’s thigh and twisted it. Evelgold staggered, blood pouring down his leg and spreading from his crushed nose. He had been blinded by the head butt and so did not see the poleax spike that drove into his face. He made a high-pitched whining noise as he fell, and another ax chopped into his belly, cleaving haubergeon and mail, opening his guts, and then the Frenchmen were past him, treading deliberately and carefully, driving deeper through the stakes and so ever closer to the English rear.

“Get close,” Saint Crispin shouted at Hook.

“I can’t,” Hook said.

Tom Evelgold shuddered. A French man-at-arms slid a sword point into his gullet and there was a thick gush of blood and then the centenar was still. More and more Frenchmen were following Lanferelle, thickening his wedge, and though archers fought them, the enemy was at last driving forward. The stakes helped by giving them something firm to lean on in the treacherous ground and the archers were being outfought. Hook tried to rally them, but they did not have the armor to stand against trained men-at-arms and so they retreated. They had not broken, not yet, but they were being pushed farther and farther back.

Hook tried to stand. He traded blows with Lanferelle, but knew he could not beat the Frenchman. Lanferelle was too fast. He did not have Hook’s strength, but he was much quicker with his weapons. “I am sorry for Melisande,” Lanferelle said, “because she will grieve for you.”

“Bastard,” Hook said, and rammed the poleax forward, had the lunge deflected, and he pulled the weapon back and this time the ax head caught on Lanferelle’s ax head, and Hook hauled back hard and for the first time saw a look of surprise on the Frenchman’s face, but Lanferelle simply let go of the shaft and Hook almost tumbled backward.

“But women recover from grief,” Lanferelle said, “by finding another man.” He stooped and picked up a fallen poleax, and did it so quickly that Hook had no chance to attack while he was down, and by the time Hook saw his chance it was too late. “Or perhaps I will put her back in a nunnery,” Lanferelle said, “and make her a proper bride of Christ.” Lanferelle grinned at Hook, then the new poleax started its relentless stabbing.